‘Fraud with plastic scrap from UK has Dutch connection’

A major fraud investigation is underway in the
UK focusing on the British plastics recycling industry. According to the
Guardian newspaper, illegal shipments of plastic waste are being routed to the Far
East via the Netherlands.

The British
Environment Agency (EA) has set up a special team following complaints that
organised criminals and firms are abusing the system. In the past quarter, six
recycling companies lost their licence in the past quarter. On separate
occasions over the past three years, one firm had 57 containers stopped at UK ports.
Containers reported to be carrying plastics were, according to the
environmental department, contaminated with other waste.

Due to concerns about contaminated plastic
waste, China, Malaysia and Vietnam have blocked waste from the UK. As a result,
the waste flow to Turkey and the Netherlands has increased considerably, it is
said. For example, imports of plastic waste to the Netherlands in the past two
years rose from almost 29 000 to over 38 000 tonnes.

‘Money laundering’ in
the Netherlands

According to the EA, British recycling
companies do not want to recycle the waste at all in the Netherlands. It would
be ‘laundered’ into Dutch plastic waste, after which it would still go to East
Asia, to countries that have recently stopped accepting British plastic.

The Netherlands does not even have the capacity
to process all the exported British plastic, the Dutch company Kunststof
Recycling told Dutch media. ‘Dutch recycling companies cannot even handle all
Dutch plastic. We do not import British plastic ourselves, but we find that
Europe is being flooded with British plastic,’ says a company spokesman.

Fraud-sensitive credits

In Britain, recycling companies earn financial
credits through the producer responsibility system of Packaging Recovery Notes.
Waste producers, such as manufacturers and retailers, buy the notes in
proportion to the amount of packaging materials they place on the market. These
certificates fluctuate but are currently around €70 per tonne for plastic.

This summer, a report from an
official UK audit body concluded this system was susceptible to fraud. The
Guardian says information has been passed to the regulators which shows British
export firms claim to have shipped 35,135 tonnes more plastic than the tax
authorities had recorded leaving the country.

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